In the more civilized and affluent countries of the world, the problem of obesity, both numerically and in degree, is a continually rising and unabated trend. Generally, this is a result of increased mechanization concomitant with decreased human physical activity combined with an increasing ready availability of inexpensive, appetizing, high calorific, inexpensive foods.
Since the time of Hippocrates, in Ancient Greece some 2,300 years ago, medicinal beliefs have held that mild and definitely more accentuated obesity is deleterious, if not fatal, to an individual's quality of health and length of life. Not only, therefore, does obesity give rise to serious individual health concerns but it also has major effects on national and international health and so world wide socioeconomic issues.
The causes of obesity are twofold:
1) regulatory obesity: PA1 2) metabolic obesity:
This is by far the more prevalent (approximately 95%) and has no disease metabolic abnormality origins, the cause being the intake of a greater calorie content food than that which is required by the body. Consequently, the management of the appetite and so food and calorie intake is the personal responsibility of the individual.
a comparatively uncommon cause which is a true disease process resulting from endocrine disorders that disrupt the body's normal inherent metabolic processes. Metabolic obesity requires medical management.
Restriction of calorie intake to below that of energy expenditure is the only way to reduce regulatory obesity and so body weight. This weight loss may be attained, without using surgical techniques, by following a predetermined diet or using a dietary aid either alone or in conjunction with a selected diet. However, the successful utilization of a diet alone is difficult and requires much discipline. The slowness in obtaining results is often so discouraging that diet plans are frequently abandoned.
Dietary aids which are readily available commercially may be broadly classified as either reduced calorie foods or as drug appetite suppressants.
It is essential when dieting, or indeed at any time, to prevent deviation from normal bodily functions which, if altered significantly, may lead to illness or death. An example would be the use of a liquid or low fibre diet, which would deprive the intestine of the solid content necessary for effective physiological and mechanical function, thus potentially causing damage thereto and, ultimately, to various benign and/or malignant disease processes of the small bowel and colon downstream.
In designing a weight reducing diet one must introduce reduced calorie content natural foodstuff(s) having a physiological and so natural, healthy passage through the length of the gastrointestinal canal. Most preferably, such a nutrition scheme would have a low calorie, high fibre and low fat content. Clearly the dietary aid must satisfy hunger and appetite senses, whilst providing complete emotional and physical appetite satisfactions of sight, smell, hearing, taste and palatability senses.
A common gastrointestinal tract problem is constipation, which occurs in all age groups but is both more common and more serious among the senior citizen age group. Often the causes of constipation are difficult to diagnose and frequently involve expensive and time consuming physician consultations, investigations, hospitalizations, treatments and/or medications.